The Ways of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  Because the van must also have gone into the water, a downstream search is initiated along both of the creek’s rugged banks, but the search progresses slowly in its early hours, severely hampered by the storm. And because the driver died in direct consequence of their escape from custody, the fugitives now stand charged with felony murder.

  The storm is still driving hard when a ground team searching the outer perimeter of the Zanco Unit with flashlights finds a dead man in the muck some thirty feet off the entrance road. His uniform confirms him as the van driver. The body is taken to the prison infirmary and identified as Juan Balestro, age thirty-two, eight years employed by Tri-Cross Medical Supplies in Big Spring, where he lives, eleven years married, father of four daughters, ages eleven, ten, nine, and six. The Terrell County sheriff relays the information to the sheriff in Big Spring, the seat of Howard County, who personally delivers the sorrowful news to Mrs Balestro at her home. Shortly after, the Terrell sheriff makes the van driver’s identity known to the press.

  In days to come, the medical examiner’s report will affirm that Balestro was inadvertently and fatally wounded by a round discharged by the front gate tower guard in his attempt to halt the fugitives. The specific cause of death will be attributed to trauma to the right subclavian artery caused by a .223 bullet that entered the torso at an upward angle under the right scapula and embedded near the top of the sternum, just below the clavicular notch, the round’s deformed shape clear indication that it was a ricochet. The fled convicts will then be charged with a second count of felony murder.

  By 10:45 that night, the storm has abated to fitful gusts and a misty rain, though it will be days before the local creeks subside to normal levels, and CO Matthew Mason, sitting before a summarily assembled fact-finding team chaired by the warden, has concluded his detailed account of the escapees’ actions in the infirmary storeroom. Also on the team are an assistant to the executive director of the TDCJ, a Texas Ranger captain, the county sheriff, and two other Zanco administrators. Mason’s bruised face, missing front tooth, cuff-abraded wrists, and torn clothes all attest to his valiant attempt to prevent the breakout.

  In keeping with his statement, the team’s report will maintain that the van driver Balestro was compelled under mortal threat to abet the convicts Wolfe and Ramirez in their escape. The team members thank Mason for his thorough answers to their questions as well as for his fortitude and willingness to remain at Zanco and be interviewed prior to being taken to a hospital for treatment. The warden grants him an indefinite leave of recuperation, and the TDCJ assistant says he is going to nominate him for a commendation for valorous service. Mason thanks them but says he was only doing his job. He is then conducted to a county patrol car that makes its way past the glaring cameras and clamoring reporters outside the front gate and conveys him to the hospital in Fort Stockton, a deputy following in Mason’s Jeep Wrangler.

  The team next summons CO Marco Baker-Gómez, who has been waiting in the hall. During the escape, Baker-Gómez was manning Number Four Tower, whose purview includes the loading zone for the infirmary. Like the other tower guards, he was diverted by the emergency flare that was launched within view of the prison, which the team suspects may have been a constituent of the escape, specifically designed to distract the Number Four Tower guard from the infirmary’s loading door long enough for the offenders to board the supply van unseen.

  Although Officer Baker-Gómez—again, like the other tower guards—had at once reported his sighting of the flare to the duty officer, the warden asserts that had Baker-Gómez also reported the diversion of his attention from a delivery in progress, the information might have prompted the office to call the front gate guard and direct him to make a meticulous search of the delivery vehicle. Baker-Gómez admits this oversight but adds that in all the excitement of the flare it did not cross his mind that the diversion might have been a ruse linked to an escape attempt. He respectfully points out that it did not cross the mind of anyone else, either, not at the time, or, if it did, that person said nothing about it. All the same, he agrees he should have informed the duty officer that the delivery van was still at the infirmary door when the flare distracted him.

  The warden expresses appreciation for his forthrightness and sense of responsibility, but his lapse of professional judgment in this critical instance cannot go undisciplined. Owing to Baker-Gómez’s heretofore exemplary record, his punishment is relatively light—a three-day suspension without pay, and a letter of reprimand in his personnel jacket, the letter to be expunged in two years’ time if Baker-Gómez incurs no other disciplinary action in the interim. Baker-Gómez is dismissed from the interview room and CO Roland Wiley is called in.

  His interview is a comparatively brief affair. The front gate guard at the time of the escape, CO Wiley admits to the investigation team that he did not search the delivery van before signaling the tower guard to let it pass. He cites Zanco’s long-standing custom of forgoing a search if the vehicle and driver are well-known to the gate guard and are of established reputation with the prison. Tri-Cross has been the medical supplier to Zanco for nearly thirty years, or so he’s been told. The driver, Balestro, is known to all the gate guards and has been making the Tri-Cross deliveries since before Wiley came to Zanco. In the four years Wiley has been here, the gate guards have always given Balestro a recognition pass-through. The TDCJ executive assistant narrows his eyes at these remarks and scribbles in a small notebook. Casting a nervous glance at the assistant, the warden says that, in any event, the unequivocal fact of the matter is that the escape succeeded because Officer Wiley made a unilateral decision not to search the van, an act of gross incompetence for which he must be held fully accountable. Effective immediately, Officer Wiley is placed on indefinite and unpaid suspension from duty until the process for his termination of employment is completed. The sheriff adds that he will want to question Wiley further as his own investigation proceeds. “Don’t go wanderin’ off anywhere, boy, you hear?”

  Wiley is dismissed and the interviews conclude. The panel confers privately regarding its public statements, then the warden and the sheriff go out to address the assembly of reporters waiting at the gate.

  33

  On the drizzly drive home to Sanderson following his session with the investigation team—the short drive heavily trafficked by vehicles with flashing rooftops—CO Marco Baker-Gómez sings along with a CD of Los Tigres del Norte. He gets a cigarette from the open pack in the console and lights up, exhaling with great satisfaction after a long shift on a job where smoking is prohibited, and especially satisfying at the end of this workday. Three days without pay and a jacket reprimand. BFD, as the onliners say. What’s three days of a CO’s salary to a man of his means? He loves the sound of that—”a man of his means.” Never had he thought he might someday come into so much money all at one time, never mind with so little effort.

  “The flare will be your exculpation, you see. Every tower man’s attention will be drawn to it. When you report it to the duty office, if they ask about the delivery, you say you have not seen anything unusual about it. If they don’t ask about the delivery, you don’t say anything about it, either. That is all we require of you. What could be easier? Even if they get caught, you will have committed no crime. Why should you have thought the flare was intended as a deliberate distraction to you or in any way related to an escape? At most you might be accused of negligence for failing to include in your report that the delivery was still in progress at the time. Whatever penalty you may receive will be minor.”

  The Mex dandy had called it exactly right.

  The light rain is still falling when he reaches Sanderson, where only a few other COs live, the majority of Zanco employees preferring to live amid the larger population and range of amenities to be found in Fort Stockton, notwithstanding that it’s a commute of more than an hour each way. A state patrol car comes down the central street, roof light flicking. Lots of cop cars at the eateries, most of which would
normally be closed at this hour, but this was hardly a normal night.

  Near the end of town he wheels into a trailer park where his double-wide stands on the far side, where there is more space between neighbors, a site he deliberately selected for its measure of privacy. The park’s tall pole lamps are the only lights on at this hour, the mobile homes still dark with sleep.

  Except, he now sees, for his own. The windows of the living room and kitchen are brightly lit, though it isn’t his habit to leave lights on when he goes to work. He parks beside the Dumpster at the end of his street and scans for an unfamiliar vehicle but doesn’t see one. He takes a .44 Magnum three-inch revolver from the glove compartment and checks the loaded cylinder, then untucks his shirt and gets out of the truck. He holds the gun under his shirt hem as he walks slowly to the house, watching his windows for movement within, the nearest neighbors’ windows for sudden light. He eases up the low set of steps to the front door and finds it unlocked. Neatly picked.

  The living room is in chaos. Furniture overturned. Sofa and chair pads slashed open, stuffing pulled out. All the cabinets in the adjoining kitchen are open, so too the refrigerator door, the floor littered with foodstuff and melting ice cubes, the plastic ice bin lying in the corner. He stands motionless and listens intently but hears nothing other than his own breath. Wasn’t them, he tells himself. Some random housebreaker is all. The notion is so ridiculous he almost laughs. Then almost cries, thinking that if they hadn’t found what they were after, they’d still be here. He moves down the hall to the bedroom and finds the room undisturbed. The search stopped before they got this far.

  No, no, no, he thinks. God, no. Then commands himself to stay calm. It could’ve been some other reason they quit and left.

  He tucks the gun in his pants and goes out on the front steps, stands in the darkness and soft rain, looks all about. Nothing astir. No lights showing in other windows. He goes around to the back of the house, which faces a stony hillside clumped with mesquites, and again stops to look around. Then gets down in the gravelly mud on his hands and knees and ducks his head and crawls under the house a short way and then rolls over on his back and stares up into the blackness of the mobile home’s underside. A really good flashlight by the bed and did you think to bring it, dumb-ass? He digs a butane cigarette lighter out of his pocket and flicks it aflame, thinking, Set your house afire now, why don’t you?

  He reaches up through the rows of pipes and bundled wiring and into the floor-beam hidey-hole and feels around for the bag. It’s not there. His hand darts around faster, as if the bag might be trying to evade it. He tells himself not to panic, he must’ve moved it over a little the last time he was down here checking on it. Stay cool, it’s here somewhere. He wriggles about on his back, searching every adjacent recess, and again returns to the niche where he’d last put it, as if this time it might be there. He keeps at this pattern, searching the same places over and over, before he finally accepts the truth.

  When he crawls out from under the house the rain has stopped altogether and a few breaks show in the cloud cover. He feels sick to his stomach. He goes back inside and sees that they took the unopened twelve-pack of Shiner bottles he’d had on a fridge shelf but left the four cans in the door rack. The bottle of Johnnie Red is still in the well-ordered pantry, which they obviously hadn’t got to before finding the bag. Team search—an inside guy or two and one or more under the house at the same time. He sits at the kitchen table, sipping from the bottle and chasing it with beer, staring at the mess around him. Double-crossing spick bastards.

  “You see how we trust you? How you can trust us? We do not pay you half now, half after, no. You get all of it now. Up in the front, as you say. Right here. Count it if you wish. Why should we not fully pay you beforehand? Will you cheat us? Will you accept the money and then not do your part of the agreement? Of course not. It would not be in your best interest to do that. We must trust each other because it is in our mutual best interest to do so. I must, however, insert an important caution. One hundred thousand dollars in cash that cannot be legally accounted for is not a simple thing to accommodate. This is especially true—and I mean no disrespect—for a man of your minor means. You must not spend any of the money right away. You do not want anyone to even suspect you are in possession of such a sum. There are too many dangerous thieves in the world. And you must not put the money in a bank right away, or ever all at once. As you may know, your banks must report to federal authorities all cash deposits of more than ten thousand dollars. As you may not know, they must also report any sequence of cash deposits of smaller sums, because such a sequence may indicate an intent to evade the requisite report. You see how it is? They have you, how do you say, going and coming back, no? If you put any of the money in a bank before the completion of the project, you might attract attention from officials and perhaps put the project at risk. Then you would have trouble with us. And that is something you do not want to happen. Once the project is completed, you may of course do as you wish, but until then you must hold on to the money and not spend any of it. That is not a suggestion. Hide it with care.”

  Yeah, right, Baker-Gómez thinks. Hide it with care. Keep it around here somewhere, fool. So we can steal it all back from you while the project’s going on. And who you gonna complain to about it? The cops? A lawyer? Chamber of Commerce?

  He hadn’t spent a dollar of it. Had planned on buying himself a cabin in East Texas, where he was from. On a nice lake. Maybe on the Neches.

  Bastards stole my future.

  The windows are pale gray with dawn light and he is thoroughly soused when he recalls that he’d got the idea for hiding the bag under the house from a crime movie he’d seen last year. A movie set in this very part of Texas. Very popular flick, as he recalls. He thinks it won an Academy Award. His visitors, it now occurs to him, probably saw it too.

  “Scapegoat” is not a word CO Roland Wiley has ever used in conversation or in writing but he knows what it means and he knows it’s what they needed and that’s exactly what they’re making him. A fucking scapegoat.

  Well, hell with them, he thinks on the rainy way home to Fort Stockton. They can shove the job all the way up their ass till it’s stuck in their throat. Worse job in the world, anyway, a CO. And fuck you too, Sheriff, and your Don’t go wanderin’ off. Just watch me, mister. Investigate all you want, but you ain’t gonna be asking me any more questions. Gonna grab up my money and hightail it to … where?

  He’s been giving it plenty of thought and all he’s decided is that it ain’t gonna be Mexico. Land of the fucking locos. Canada’s way more like it. And Gretchel? His engaged-to-be-engaged girlfriend of … how long’s it been? Four years? Ask her to come along? What for? Why even bother? She ain’t about to want to go anywhere, not her. Thirty-seven years old and still living with momma and daddy. Night manager at La Quinta and loves the job. She’s anyway lost a goodly share in the looks department these last coupla years. Good titties still, give her that, but she’s getting a belly, and that ass is got way out of hand. Really, guy, where’s the loss? Bound to be more good-looking Canadian girls than you can shake a dick at who’ll take interest in a dude with an ever-ready roll of greenbacks. American buck’s worth more in Canada too. Yessir, Canada’s it. You’re a man with a plan, Stan.

  A half-mile south of Fort Stockton he comes upon the most serious roadblock he’s ever seen. Cop cars of every kind—state, county, city—all with roof lights going. Cops in SWAT gear and with automatic weapons. He opens his window and presents his ID. A flashlight fixes on it, then on his face, plays over his uniform, and he’s waved through.

  His rented one-bedroom house is in a small neighborhood near the city park. As soon as he walks in and sees the place turned upside down his gut knots and he bolts to the bedroom and starts toward the corner where he keeps the little stool and then sees it’s not there, it’s already standing in the closet. Lying beside it on the floor is the nine-inch-square section he’d cut out of the r
earmost part of the closet’s plasterboard ceiling, above the shelf over the clothes rack, a part of the ceiling you couldn’t see just standing in front of the closet. He had put the money up in there and then put the square piece back in place, so evenly cut it hardly showed a seam. How could they know to look there?

  How you think, dickhead? By being a fuck of a lot better at this sorta thing than you.

  He stands on the stool and reaches up into the opening and feels all around in the emptied spot. He can’t accept this. Can not believe it. He goes out into the hall where closet stuff has been tossed on the floor and gets his softball bat and goes back in the room and rams the crown of the bat again and again into the closet ceiling until he’s broken it all up and brought it down in chalk-dusty pieces. No bag. Then he’s kneeling over the toilet, being sick. After a while he gets up and rinses his mouth and paces around the house, eyes hot with enraged dejection, a sour taste still on his tongue. Fucking greaser pricks! What’d that fancy-suit beaner say? All that cash could be hard to “accommodate.” Bastard son of a skanky whore!

  “You understand correctly,” the guy had told him. “You need to do nothing but to follow the same procedure as always with this vehicle and its driver. You check his identification. You give the signal to the tower to open the gate. The vehicle passes through as it always does. That is all. In your happiest dreams you will never receive so much money for such a routine service of no risk at all to yourself. For simply doing what you always do.”

  Showing you them pearly teeth. Patting you on the shoulder like a old pal.

  His stomach roils again and he rushes back to the john and for a while remains kneeled there, staring into the ruin of his life. He cannot believe his circumstance. Thirty-two years old and nothing ahead for him now but an empty road to nowheresville. Everybody knows things can change awful damn sudden in this life, and there’s no place on earth you’ll hear more stories about that than in a prison. But this?