“More’s the pity. Fucking American kid getting dragged into this fuckin’ Mexican gang shit.” Pierce spat tobacco in Diego’s face. “Don’t you fucking wipe that off, asswipe,” Pierce said. “You’re a fuckin’ disgrace.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“You don’t get no fuckin’ attorney, Diego. We’re kickin’ you loose, ’cause, like you say, we got nothin’ on you. Yet. But we have got somethin’ on that cousin of yours living with you, that fucking Magdaleno. Him and his baby sister and his folks? They’s all illegal. We’ll be comin’ for them soon as the paperwork comes through from Tell Lyon and Able Hawk. Should have it by tomorrow morning. Then we’re raiding your house and shipping them all back to old Meh-hi-co.”
“Hawk ain’t sheriff anymore,” Diego said. He tilted his head—trying to keep the stinking stream of chewing tobacco trailing down his cheek from reaching his own mouth.
Sheriff Pierce shook his head. “Able resigning from his post don’t mean El Gavilan ain’t still helping me on the immigration-control front. Don’t believe stuff you see on the news. And Lyon’s ex-Border Patrol, so you know how he feels about your kind. Hawk still hates you Mexicans. I couldn’t make half the arrests I’m making of illegals without their help. And now, your so-called gang is on Lyon’s and Hawk’s radar in a big way. The only hope you and yours have is that some Mexican gang with some real stones—say, MS-13 or Calle 18—snuffs Hawk and Lyon. And they’d need to do it tonight to save that family of yours. To save you. ’Cause, swear to God, Diego, I’m going to take you down, hard. What do you think your mother and sister will do for cash once your drug money’s deprived them? Figure they’ll both be hooking inside a week. Lots of your kind, and I guess mine too—whites, I mean—they like fuckin’ tight little thirteen-year-olds. Not that I really think that sister of yours is a virgin.”
Diego tried to come up out of the chair but Deputy Luke Strider, standing behind Diego, pushed him back down.
“Tonight’s your last good night, Diego,” Sheriff Pierce said. “That is, if tomorrow morning still finds Tell Lyon and Able Hawk drawing air. If them two make it through this night, I swear to you that you’ll be toast before lunch tomorrow. But those two don’t have anything to fear from the likes of you, do they, Diego? Hell, you MS-13 pussies can’t kill time, much less a man.”
Diego stared at Walt Pierce, uncomprehending. He said, “You want me to kill them? You asking me to do it, giving me fucking permission? Is that what you’re asking, old man?”
Walt smiled, close down in Diego’s face, the light shining on his near-shaven head. “I ain’t asking you to do anything, Diego,” the sheriff said.
* * *
Shawn heard his computer’s drive spin and the digital voice said, “You have mail.”
He’d get to that.
Now his doctor was leaning over Shawn, carefully unwrapping and cutting away gauze and bandages, prattling on about Shawn’s needing to “understand” and to “modulate expectations,” and “not focus on scars and stitches” but on “how much progress” he had already made in healing.
Shawn’s mouth was dry with anticipation. He couldn’t wait to open his mouth to speak again.
* * *
Tell and Tom Winch sat on the hood of his command cruiser. Tell had parked under the shade of a tree and brought along several bottled waters. Tom Winch—pale, pudgy-faced—sipped his Aquafina and wiped the wetness from his still-growing mustache.
“What do we do now, Chief,” Winch said, “I guess that’s the question, huh? If I testify to the fact that in his cups Luke confessed to helping dump them two murdered prostitutes after tag-teaming them with Sheriff Pierce, my life won’t be worth spit. I’ll lose my job, for sure.”
Tell said, “I’m sure that could happen short-term. But your testimony would allow me to arrest the two of them. That would mean new leadership and arbitration through the FOP. You’d get your job back within a couple of days. I’m certain of that, Deputy.”
“Probably true,” Tom agreed. “But I’d be an outcast. The other deputies are fiercely faithful to that sadistic bastard. They’d make my life a living hell. I think there’s a fair chance one or more would kill me to see my testimony suppressed. ’Specially if it’s all you’ve got against Pierce and Strider. From where I sit, that seems to be the case.”
“I can’t lie and say otherwise,” Tell said. “Just your testimony and the film I found.”
“Well that isn’t near enough. And I’m guessing that’s why we’re having this talk I’m already regretting.”
“You’re a good cop, Tom,” Tell said. “I can see that. And you’re a moral man. You honor the job. These others you work with are thugs hiding behind badges. In the case of Pierce and Strider, they’re sadistic rapists and killers using those badges.”
“That’s all true. But I have my life to think about. My wife.”
“We’ll get her protection, right now,” Tell said. “We’ll work through the unions to see you remain on wages but safely off the job while the trial wraps up. When it’s over, I have work for you. I’ve been given permission to hire two more full-time officers. I’ll start you at your present pay and you can retain any accrued vacation and personal time. I’ll do that when the trial’s over. But this offer remains between us, and I can’t do it sooner. We can’t have the job you know I have waiting for you looking like some quid pro quo, like some reward in exchange for testimony.” Tell searched the man’s face. “Because we both know it isn’t like that. You’re driven to do the right thing.”
“I don’t want to do this,” Tom Winch said. “Oh my God, I don’t want to.”
“But you know you have to,” Tell pressed. “Thalia Ruiz and at least one of these other women those two raped and tortured and killed were citizens, Tom. Single mothers. And Pierce and Strider will do it again. You’re the only one who can stop them from taking some other child’s mother away. Please help me, Tom. I swear I’ll see you and yours are protected.”
“I need a night to think about it, Chief. Just one night.”
Disappointed, Tell said, “Okay, Tom. One night. But you know what you have to do.”
“I do,” he said, looking sick. “Just need a night to edge myself into it. It’s just one night. One last good night.”
* * *
“Oh, God,” Shawn said, his voice hoarse and brittle. “Oh, Jesus!”
“It’s not as bad as you’re seeing it,” his doctor said urgently. “Look again—imagine those stitches out. They will be in a week. Imagine those scars gone. They will be, in a month. That eye will be fixed this time next week. Your hair? You can color that. In time, the pigment might even reassert itself, young as you are. Once that ear’s a little better healed, we’ll have a cosmetic surgeon come in and pull it back. Sorry about the angle of the mirror and you seeing your mouth, but I swear to you, when the implants are in, you’ll look great … just like you did before. We’re replicating your teeth from the ones your cop friend found. I’ll defy you to tell me your teeth don’t look like you remember them when we’re done.”
“And my nose,” Shawn said, “what about my fucking nose? Is there more you’re going to do there?”
“That’s a little different,” his doctor said reluctantly. “A nose is mostly cartilage, Shawn. We can’t do much more than we have. There are prosthetic possibilities …”
Shawn surveyed his face again. He didn’t recognize himself. Even his eyes looked strange to him—crazed and empty. His hair had gone white like one of Andy Warhol’s wacky wigs.
His face was a crazy quilt of welts and scars and stitches like Christopher Lee’s face in that shitty old remake of Frankenstein.
His right eye was drooping like Stallone’s in the last reel of Rocky.
His right ear stuck straight out like the geek on the cover of Mad Magazine.
With his missing teeth, his chin thrust out like that of a cartoon witch. He had an old man’s mouth. Shawn reminded himself of his grandfather
the two terrible times he’d seen the old bastard with his dentures out.
The worst was his nose—some bobbed, pug-looking thing. Like something a girl with a bad plastic surgeon would end up with … an ugly chick’s nose.
When Shawn had taken the picture of himself with his nurse’s cell phone—the picture he’d sent to Patricia—the screen had been too small and his eyes too swollen to see much.
The doctor pulled the mirror away. “Next time—a week from now—you’ll look again at that face and see 100 percent improvement, Shawn. I swear to you. Now let me get your nose and some of your face re-dressed and then we’ll see about getting you into that wheelchair. We’ll get you out for a spin, yes?”
“Sure,” Shawn said. At least he could talk again, though his speech sounded funny and slurred with no teeth. Lispy. “Sure. That would be great, Doc.”
From the bed next to him, Troy Marshall said, “I remember you from before, kid, from the meth raid. You’ll look the same, like the doc said, once they get your teeth fixed. I mean, what’s a fucking nose in the bigger scheme of things?” He pointed to his own bent and three-times-broken nose. “Think I was born with this goddamn thing?”
* * *
Diego sat in the detached garage behind the Ortiz home, checking the AK-47 he’d retrieved from the MS-13’s single undiscovered cache of weapons.
“You can’t do this, Diego,” his cousin, Magdaleno, said. “You can’t snuff a cop, Diego. They’ll kill you for that.”
“No, the fucking sheriff asked me—ordered me—to kill this ex-cop and the other, this Lyon. You wouldn’t understand, pendejo.” Diego looked up from his gun at his cousin and shook his head. Magdaleno was a straight arrow, clean-cut dressed American. Magdaleno had shunned every attempt that Diego had made to connect his cousin with MS-13.
No, Diego’s fucking straight-arrow cousin just wanted to hang with that other gone-American newbie Richie Huerta. “This is how things really work,” Diego said. “This is how things happen. This is how the world really works.”
“Bullshit,” Magdaleno said. “You never killed anyone, and—”
“You don’t know that!”
“You’ve never killed anyone,” Magdaleno repeated, “and you don’t want to try and kill El Gavilan and El Léon. Especially not them.”
“Fucking listen to yourself, Mag,” Diego snarled. “You talk like you’re some fucking peasant back home and that they are Villa and Zapata. I’m being a man and protecting the family.”
“Yeah, you’re muy macho,” Magdaleno sneered. “You’re being used by the white man.”
“Fuck you!”
“No, fuck you, Diego! You’re being used. If you ever watched the news, or read a newspaper, you’d know that Lyon has accused your fucking Walt Pierce’s deputy of murdering Thalia Ruiz and three other sisters. That’s why Pierce wants you to kill Lyon. Diego, put away that gun before you destroy our family. If you’re caught, all the attention will be on us, Diego. We’ll be deported, and your mother and sister will be here alone.”
Diego stood and wrapped his gun back up in the blanket he had found covered within the gang’s hidden stash. “I’ve gotta go. Gotta do this thing. You just keep your fucking mouth shut.”
Magdaleno stepped up to his cousin. “You can’t do this, Diego. I can’t let you.”
Diego smiled and then lashed out with the butt of his AK-47. He caught his cousin in the temple. He reached out and grabbed Magdaleno’s belt buckle with his right hand, pulling back just enough to cushion his cousin’s fall to the concrete slab floor of the garage. Diego waited to see his cousin draw a couple of breaths, then looked again at the piece of paper with the addresses of Able Hawk and Tell Lyon written there.
THEN
The pueblo was a fireball. The flames licked high up into the night sky. Flat as it was out here, Tell thought it must be visible for miles around. Soon, someone would come to investigate.
Seven, maybe eight of Angel Valenzuela’s band were already dead or well on their way to dying; nothing that happened tonight was being done under color of authority, and there would be no emergency services to treat the wounded on either side. No prisoners would be taken.
As the building burned, Chris Lyon insisted Tell stay upwind, far from the smells of any burning things that might trigger stronger, unendurable memories of the fire that had burned down his cousin’s pretty world.
A man—the sole survivor from the gun battle—was on his knees in the sand. He’d been shot through both feet by Chris so he couldn’t run. The man’s hands were secured behind his back with plastic handcuffs.
Chris had a Ruger pressed to the back of Angel Valenzuela’s head, held up tight behind the drug lord’s right ear.
Tell approached slowly; didn’t say anything as he closed in. Chris didn’t say anything either, just searched his cousin’s eyes a last time. Tell nodded and Chris passed him the handgun.
Angel was watching Tell closely too, licking his bloodied lips and testing teeth with his tongue’s tip.
Would the bastard sneer at Tell? Maybe spit blood at his face or on Tell’s boot toe?
Would he laugh derisively and make jokes about Marita and Claudia?
The drug lord bowed his head. In a guttural, cracking voice, Valenzuela pleaded for his life. His family, he said, needed him. His children, he said, needed a father.
“Please,” Valenzuela said. “Please, don’t. I’m begging you. I’ll pay you both … much money. More than you two can imagine.”
It was Tell who found himself sneering. He said, “After so many payoffs you’ve offered me through your minions these past couple of years, what makes you think I’d take your money now, after all you’ve taken from me?”
Stepping aside to make room for Tell behind the kneeling man, Chris said, “We don’t have much time, Tell. That fire’s bound to bring company, and sooner rather than later.”
Tell nodded but stood his ground. He said, “Not from behind, Chris. This one’s going to be face-to-face.” Tell said it more for Angel Valenzuela’s benefit than his cousin’s.
Moving a step closer, Tell pressed the muzzle of the automatic between Angel’s eyes. Angel whimpered and said, “You’re no killer. I know men.” His voice trembling, Angel said, “I know men and you are not one who can kill in cold blood. You’ve never killed, I can tell. You are not the kind to take a life. Not like this now.”
A deep, ragged breath. Tell closed his eyes, feeling that blast-furnace wind and hearing the crackle and low roar of the fire. He saw Claudia there on her deathbed.
“I’m no killer?” Tell nodded slowly. He said, “You’re right for about one more second.”
* * *
Chris and the others saw to the bodies.
That duty consisted mostly of dragging them some distance to throw them into the burning building.
All but Angel—they left him for eventual identification or for the desert scavengers. Chris did pat down the drug lord’s body before they left. He found what looked like a kind of address book. He tossed it to Tell.
Back at the hotel, showered and numb with drink but still smelling blood and cordite, smelling fire, Tell walked out a ways into the desert by himself.
He stared up at the moon and all the hard stars.
After his shower, he’d flipped through the pages of Valenzuela’s book of contacts.
He’d found a name: Seth Alvin.
As it grew darker around him, Tell realized he was shaking. He tried to believe it was just the cold of the desert night.
FIFTY FOUR
“Time for rehab again?” Shawn was surprised how calm his own voice sounded. But he was at last resolved, so maybe that was why.
“Yeah, that time again,” Troy Marshall said. “Be nice to get back here this time though. I mean, now that we can jaw together.”
“Yeah,” Shawn said evenly, “will be good to talk.” The doctor had replaced only about half the bandages Shawn had previously worn. “Sorry about the view
, though, Troy. Jesus, I’m an ugly son of a bitch now.”
“You’re fine, Shawn. Better’n you think. Given how many there were beating on you, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I’ve seen plenty of guys after all kinds of beatings, so I know. And I did two tours in Iraq. Saw really nasty stuff there happen to guys. Six months later, guys a lot worse off than you looked great. Give it time, Shawn. Trust me. I’ve seen what the docs can do. But it takes time.”
“Okay.”
“I mean that, Shawn. You hear me?”
“I know. I do too … hear what you’re saying, I mean.”
“I get back, we need to compare notes on Able Hawk. Love to get your take on what happened there.”
“It’s a puzzler,” Shawn agreed. He buzzed for the nurse. Wendy Fahy said, “Problem, Shawn sweetie?”
“My guard’s headed out for rehab,” Shawn said, hating the sound of his own distorted voice … his s’s sounded like th’s … like that fucking cartoon cat Sylvester. “Wondered if I could get an orderly to get me in the chair again. Had that taste of freedom and I guess it made me itchy for more.”
Wendy chuckled, causing static on the intercom. She said, “Sounds like me after my first divorce. I’ll get Rufus down with your chair, sweetie.”
Shawn waved goodbye at Troy as the sheriff’s deputy clunked his way out on a walker. A little over an hour—that was the average duration of Troy’s physical rehabilitation sessions. More than enough time. As Shawn awaited the orderly to arrive with the electric wheelchair, his computer chirped up again. Its digitized female voice said, “You have mail!”
Well, the hell with that. Why answer mail now? What difference could it possibly make?
And Shawn had already decided he wasn’t leaving a suicide note.
Sorry, Mom … And it would spare Patricia too. You lucked out on that front, Patty.
Resentment … anger … betrayal.
Well, farewell to all that. Not going to guilt you, Patty. Not going to ghost your bones. I’ll be the better human and leave you to your pending newlywed bliss. Still, if you hadn’t left me that one night, it would all be maybe different. We both know that’s so.
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